The-Man-Who-Was-Not-Her-Prince
by The Eclectic Bookworm
Summary: Rose didn't want the metacrisis, and he left as soon as his TARDIS was fully grown. Three years later, he comes back in his new TARDIS, and Rose practically leaps into his arms. The only catch? She believes he's the original Time Lord who she went on all those adventures with, and as she falls head-over-heels in love with him the Doctor must decide whether to continue the charade.
1. Once upon a time

**I really, really, really shouldn't start another story, because I am truly horrible at finishing stories, but this idea hit me and I couldn't resist. **

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_Once upon a time-Don't look like that, Tony. All the good stories begin with "Once upon a time." All of them. I know there are stories with princesses that start like that, but there are stories with dragons as well. Dragons and monsters and such. No, I can't promise you monsters in this story. Not quite yet. You might have to wait a bit._

_Anyway._

_Once upon a time, there was a girl. Don't make a face. It'll get stuck like that and then Mum'll blame me. She wasn't a princess, Tony. She had blonde hair, yes, but that doesn't make a girl a princess. This girl lived in a small flat and had trouble opening the jam jar-yeah, like me. She was ordinary, and she knew it, and she wanted something more than her simple life. She had a loving mum and a sweet boyfriend, and part of her thought that she should be content, but she never was._

_One day, a prince-no, a lord, but we'll call him a prince-came up and swept her into his life of danger. He was a lord, but his palace had burned to the ground, and now he was-um, remember that movie we saw? Robin Hood? That Disney one with the talking fox? He was like that. He was a good man, but his only home was his ship._

_The girl fell in love with him. Completely and utterly, because he was good and kind and brave and funny, and maybe he rolled his eyes at her once or twice, but his heart was in the right place. Oh, Tony, don't make a face. Love is a big part of all stories._

_But then her prince came close to death at the hands of the ones who had burnt his home, and the ordinary girl had to save him. In doing so, she changed him so much that she thought the prince she loved was gone for good._

_Except he wasn't. He was different, yes, but there were still bits of him that were the same. M-maybe he talked a bit more-I'm not crying, Tony, I'm just cold. It's just a cold. I'm okay, sweetheart. Anyway, maybe he talked a bit more, and maybe he was a bit handsomer, and maybe his ears didn't stick out quite as endearingly, but he was still her prince. And he learned to love her, just as she relearned loving him._

_But then the girl got lost, and her prince couldn't find her. They met one last time, to say goodbye, but they couldn't touch each other. I don't know how. You come up with why they couldn't touch each other._

_He wasn't a zombie! He was fine! I know I said that you should come up with something, but I didn't mean that he was a zombie. They couldn't touch each other, okay?_

_Anyway._

_She told him she loved him, but he disappeared before he could tell her that he loved her. And the girl's heart was broken, because over the time she had spent with her prince he had become her life, silly though it was. _

_Two years passed. The girl went back to her mum and she got to spend time with her new little brother and she had money now, lots of it, but she wasn't happy. She felt like she should be, because she had everything an ordinary person could ever want. But that was just it. She wasn't ordinary anymore._

_And then, against the odds, she found her prince again. She fought her way to him across whole worlds, because he was worth it and she loved him more completely than she had ever loved anyone. What? Oh, yeah, the boyfriend. She and him split up way back._

_But when she found him, he nearly died again. She was so scared that she would lose him, but instead, somehow, because this is only a story, Tony, he created another him. Only this him was a little bit different, and she knew in her heart that it wasn't him._

_Her prince could never stay with her. He didn't do domestic, and both of them knew that, however hard she tried to deny it. So he left her with the other him, on a beach in Norway, and she cried._

_Then she kissed the man-who-was-not her-prince because he said that he loved her, and she could pretend it was him if she closed her eyes. But she couldn't be with him, even though he did love her, and she could have him forever, because he was not her prince. He was a copy, just like on the Xerox machines that Mum always tells you not to play with. And she couldn't be with someone who would be a reminder of the life that she'd lost._

_Three more years passed. The man-who-was-not-her-prince left to rebuild his ship. She never saw him again._

_And that's the end of the story, Tony. Now, do you think that the girl made the right choice?_

* * *

"No," replied Rose's five-year-old brother.

They were sitting on the sofa together, Rose's legs bent under her and Tony snuggled into her side. She was babysitting him, and she had thought that maybe the advice of a child would help her a bit. Phrasing it as a story made it seem less real, but it also made her seem like a bit of a picky person. Him, and no other. The Doctor, and not the metacrisis.

"Why not?" asked Rose.

"'Cos he loved her, and she loved him, and there was only a few differences, so why couldn't they be together?" asked Tony. "Also your story was boring. Can I have a cookie?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Not happening. It's seven-thirty. Bedtime."

"Aww, Roooose!" groaned Tony dramatically. "Just a bit longer?"

"I promised Mum and Dad, remember?"

"No."

"You don't want to, or you don't remember?"

"Both!" said the suddenly sulky young boy. "Please, just a bit longer?"

"Come on, up you get." Rose carefully lifted Tony up into her arms.

"I'm not-" -here Tony stifled a yawn- "-tired, I swear, Rose!"

"Still." Rose walked up the stairway out of the third-floor living room (they had a great deal of living rooms, but this one was Tony's personal relaxation room) and into Tony's bedroom, placing her sleepy brother on his bed. "Night night, don't let the bedbugs bite."

"Then they'll infect me and I'll bite you, Rose! RAWR!" Tony stood up on the bed, overbalanced, and would have cracked his head on the headboard if Rose hadn't grabbed his hands and lowered him firmly down again.

"No midnight snacks, no getting up, and if you eat any more toothpaste I tell Mum, got it?"

"Got it!" replied Tony brightly.

Rose ran a hand through his blonde curls and smiled at him. Being with Tony was the only time she felt like she had when she traveled with the Doctor. "Night."

Tony snuggled under the covers. "Night. Don't kiss me. I'm a bedbug."

"Works for me," sang out Rose playfully, carefully shutting the door behind her and heading down to the second floor, which was where her bedroom was located. Her smile vanished as soon as the door was shut, and the cloud of misery that had been hanging over her for five years now came back with a vengeance.

She sunk down onto another expensive sofa on the second floor and buried her face in her hands. Part of her wished badly that she hadn't turned away the metacrisis, but another part of her knew that she could never love the metacrisis for who he was. Only who he reminded her of.

She could still see him, clutching the TARDIS coral, saying, "I'm about to start growing it, Rose, maybe you could come over and visit sometime, I've got a flat with doors and a carpet and everyth-" and she had cut him off, saying, "We can't do this" with horrible finality.

And then she heard it.

The whoosh of the TARDIS.

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**Reviews? As I'm only just starting up the story this chapter is a bit shorter than the rest are going to be.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	2. This is so easy

**I am very tired and I should probably go to bed, but I want to get this chapter out because the second chapter is always better than the first in all of my fics. Anyone ever have that happen to them? It's actually a pretty common thing on Fanfiction.**

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The Doctor-not the Time Lord but the metacrisis-was back in Pete's World.

He had traveled the universe for a long time-two years-and he was done. Everything was empty without Rose, because now he was human and the stakes were higher and he had to sleep a _lot, _which was more than a little bit disturbing. Not to mention that the opportunity to win over Rose, however unlikely it was, was being squandered the longer he stayed out there. Already he had discovered a white hair.

Okay, it wasn't really white. He'd spilled the flour on himself a few days ago and he must have missed a spot in his hair, but the _possibility _of gray hair still remained.

As the TARDIS stopped whirring, he took a nervous breath, preparing himself for an angry, lonely Rose full of hatred towards him and longing for his Time Lord self. His hands left the console and he hurried over to the coat rack, pulling on his jacket. Surprisingly, the TARDIS had found some sort of way to duplicate every single item he had ever owned. For a moment he could pretend he was in his old TARDIS, simply because it almost _was._

But it was only a bit of his TARDIS. _Part of it is something else_, he laughed wryly. He almost understood how Rose might be feeling.

Almost.

The Doctor steeled himself and took a nervous step toward the TARDIS doors. Another step, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and he was facing the doors with his stomach doing unpleasant somersaults.

_Oh, come off it, Spaceman,_ he heard Donna's irritated voice in his head. The little bit of Donna in him was the small voice in his head that prodded him-he might call it a sort of conscience if it didn't always prompt him to be rash and blunt. _This the same bloke who fights aliens, can't even handle one measly human girl? And you're always saying that you're the better species. Ha!_

The Doctor took another breath and pushed open the door. No sign of Rose, but the lights in the Tyler mansion were on. She'd probably heard the sound of the TARDIS. Hesitantly, he stepped out, the TARDIS doors swinging shut behind him. The back door of the mansion, the one that led into the backyard where he was parked, was pushed furiously open, and-

"_DOCTOR!"_

Rose Tyler, clad in only a t-shirt and pink boxers, came sprinting out to him from the back door, her feet bare in the haste she'd made to get to him.

"Rose," said the Doctor incredulously, and then she was kissing him fiercely, lovingly, pressing him up against the TARDIS in her utter desperation to touch him, her hands dancing from his hair to his cheeks to his shoulders to his chest and back up again.

The Doctor was in heaven. He sank down into the dewy grass, sitting propped up against the TARDIS with Rose on his lap, her lips doing extraordinary things to his. His mouth was already half-open, due to the fact that the kiss had taken him a bit by surprise, and she took this as ample opportunity to slide her tongue into his mouth-

The sound of Pete's car driving up startled them both apart, and Rose stared lovingly at him for a moment (the Doctor stared lovingly back and noticed rather proudly that her lips were slightly swollen) before whispering, "I knew you'd come for me, Doctor."

"Glad to see you have faith in me," laughed the Doctor a bit dazedly, reaching up to touch her cheek lightly with the back of his hand.

"Always. You're _my _Doctor."

"This is a bit of a change," said the Doctor, remembering the last time he'd seen her, two years ago, in the mansion. Him with the TARDIS coral, her with a cold and unwavering look in her eye that had shattered his heart. "You know, seeing as you were so eager to leave me."

"What are you talking about?" asked Rose, sounding honestly bewildered. "_You _left _me _last time, in Norway, and Mum had to call Dad's zeppelin in, and I had to sit with the metacrisis through the whole thing, and it was horrible mostly because he wasn't _you._ I could tell, sort of."

The bottom dropped out of the Doctor's world as he realized the mistake Rose had made. She thought he was a Time Lord. Her faith in him-_well_, the Time Lord him-was staggering. Did she honestly believe that he would come for her, splitting apart two universes just to get to her? _Well, _the Time Lord him. _He _as in himself would always come for her.

"Mmm," said the Doctor evasively, and kissed her again, lightly, on the lips, so that he could feel the love in the way she kissed him back and pretend that all that love was intended for _him, _the real him, not just the man who he was a small part of.

Then he pulled away reluctantly. "Rose, I doubt your mum'll be pleased to see me, and it's bloody cold out here. You should go in. I'm going to-"

"Please don't leave," Rose whispered. "Please, please, I've missed you so much, and if you go I'll think I made it all up. Please."

The Doctor kissed her forehead. "I'll be back in the morning, love."

"Oh!" Rose gave a little exclamation, more of a sob than a word, and then she added softly, "Promise?"

He kissed her lips one last time, even though he knew he shouldn't, even though she longed for a man with a passionate love for her, one who could never tell her that he felt that way. "Promise."

Reluctantly, Rose let go of him, and he stood up with his heart pounding furiously for a different reason than before.

* * *

"He _is!_" said Rose furiously the next morning, spraying bits of cinnamon roll all over the table. Tony laughed. "He's _back!_ He left in the TARDIS, and he promised me that he'd be back. He wouldn't just _leave_ me, I know it."

Jackie clucked her tongue in response and buttered Tony's toast. "Didn't he say that he could never come back?"

"I dunno, maybe there's some-some crisis going on again. Maybe the universe is imploding!" said Rose brightly with disturbing happiness that usually didn't go hand in hand with such a horrifying prediction.

Her mother laughed softly. "Rose, he's-he's gone. He left ya."

"He didn't _leave _me!" said Rose emphatically. "He couldn't stay with me, because the metacrisis had to go and create himself and _my _Doctor couldn't let the metacrisis live alone, and the metacrisis was him and wasn't him and-oh," she sighed sadly, sinking down into a chair at their dining room table. "Oh, you were right, Mum. He sort of _did. _But now he's back. He promised me that he would come back."

"Rose, sweetheart, the Doctor isn't coming back."

_Ding-dong!_

The doorbell echoed, and just as Rose's heart ballooned with hope her little brother jumped out of his chair and raced away with a shout of "I'll get it!"

"Tony, _no!" _shouted Rose desperately, sprinting after her brother, her bedroom slippers sliding on the impeccably waxed mansion floor. Tony had opened the door, not recognized the person standing in the doorway, and ran away, as he was wont to do with anyone he didn't know. For such a hyperactive boy, he was incredibly shy.

Thus, Rose skidded straight into the Doctor's arms (because it _was _him at the door) and, seeing as it was such a perfect opportunity, she lifted her lips to his in a passionate kiss, desperate to believe that he was there for good-

"ROSE!"

Rose jumped guiltily away from the Doctor and nearly fell down on the slippery floor. The Doctor grabbed her hands, pulled her up, and gave Rose a goofy grin which she happily returned before turning to her mother. "Yes, Mum?"

Jackie made a few stunned noises in the back of her throat-Rose hadn't shone with happiness the way she did now in _quite _a while-before saying, "I'll make you some tea, all right, Doctor? You two go ahead and catch up."

* * *

"Ah, brilliant," said the Doctor appreciatively. "I love this sofa. Rose Tyler, you have the best sofa ever. I don't think that any of the sofas in the TARDIS compare to this one."

Rose smiled contentedly and cuddled into him. "I really missed you."

It then came to the Doctor's attention that she was cuddled into his right side, where (if she was being extremely observant, which in her happy daze he doubted she was) she might realize that she didn't hear the presence of a second heart.

He moved away. "You know what I think would be brilliant? I think we should go on a date together, in your world. You show me all the good places, we go out for dinner, and then you and I are off on the TARDIS-how does that sound?"

Rose grinned broadly. "Great, yeah, but…I mean, this world is pretty boring. Can't you take me to some nice secluded planet instead?"

"No, absolutely not, because I have missed you a lot these past two years, and I want to see how you've been spending your time without me."

"But secluded planet next, yeah?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor eagerly. "All we'll do there is talk and-""

"Knowing your luck, you'll steer us right into trouble," teased Rose.

"How about I let you steer this time, then?" replied the Doctor.

"Please. Your idea of letting me steer is telling me exactly what to do and then letting me do it." Rose snuggled into his heart-free side _again. _

The Doctor stood up. Rose looked hurt, and he said hastily, "I don't mind you near me, Rose, I'm just wondering where your mum's at with that tea." He then carefully sat down next to Rose so that she would curl into his _left _side and kissed her hair softly to distract her.

It worked.

"Now," he said, "where are we going for our amazing date night?"

"Is it odd to you that we sort of did this backwards?" asked Rose, looking up at him. "I tell you I love you, we kiss, and you show up on my doorstep and ask me on a date."

"_Well, _when you put it _that _way…" replied the Doctor with a bit of a laugh in his voice.

"Doctor-"

"Yes?"

"You-you were going to say something, that day on Bad Wolf Bay, that first one. But the second time you said that it didn't need saying…" Rose's voice trailed off awkwardly.

"I love you," the Doctor told Rose, forgetting about him not being the one she loved and about her not being able to love anyone but the one man who she could never have. What he said was true and real, and she could see it in his eyes.

Rose kissed him again, then pulled away with her hands still cupping his face and said, with her tone full of wonder, "This is so _easy, _you and me."

"Yeah," said the Doctor breathlessly.

* * *

Jackie Tyler came in with a cup of tea to see Rose talking softly to the Doctor, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in a smile Jackie hadn't seen for years.

_If the Doctor wants to take Rose away from me again, so be it, _thought Jackie. _She is so much happier with him. She loves him._

Rose turned to her mother and gave Jackie an I-told-you-so smile before saying happily, "Ooh, Mum, thanks! Here, I'll get some sugar. This bloke-"–this punctuated by a gentle poke to the Doctor's ribs- "can't take tea without sugar."

"Not true!" gasped the Doctor indignantly, his hand finding Rose's. "I can't take _coffee _without sugar. Get your terms right."

Rose laughed and grinned at her mother happily. The facade of the tough Torchwood employee who never cracked a smile thrown to the winds as she drew her knees up onto the couch and snuggled into the Doctor, who had a strange look of guilt on his face.

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**Reviews are much appreciated. Like, much. A lot.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


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